With a professional Master in Economics, Socio Anthropology and Communication for Rural Development, Mr. Guigonou Freddy Pierre PADONOU has 7 years of experience in: (i) Agricultural Value links & development of clusters; (ii) Agribusiness; (iii) ICT for Agriculture; (iv) Monitoring-evaluation, strategic planning & projects / programs capitalization’; (v) project management as well as (vi) SDGs meanstreaming at the local level.
During these years, Mr. Guigonou Freddy held various positions in particular those related to (i) technical project assistant within the Federation of Producer Unions of Benin; (ii) technical assistant to a service delivery consultant with the Dutch Development Corporation (SNV); (iii) coordinator of various projects within Act for development NGO (www.act-dev.org) and (iv) agribusiness specialist within Modeling Agri Systems team (ICT4AG).
He also works as a full-time consultant in the study office Cosinus Conseils (www.cosinus-conseils.org) and part-time in offices such as Golf expertises (Benin), GIREF SARL (Mali), AFRICO (Niger), IPSO (Burkina-Faso), Landell Mills (United Kingdoms), etc.
With his active participation in several consultations, missions, studies and/or development projects both in Benin and in the West African sub-region, Mr. Guigonou Freddy has embraced the following main areas:
• Agricultural policies and challenges of the sector in the ECOWAS region;
• Monitoring, evaluation and capitalization of projects, implementation of monitoring and evaluation systems;
• Socio-economic studies;
• Economic and financial analysis of agricultural value added chains (CVA);
• Wather, Hygiene and sanitation (WASH)
Proactive, flexible, endowed with a high sense of honesty, probity and a critical mind, Mr. Guigonou Freddy knows how to show respect for others while being able to adapt to the different pressures emanating from a team work with good listening, analysis, synthesis and writing skills.
Freddy Guigonou Pierre PADONOU
Freddy Guigonou Pierre PADONOU
Consultant
Cosinus Conseils
Benin
Freddy Guigonou Pierre PADONOU
Consultant Cosinus ConseilsHello dear contributors and thank you for the exciting debate about the importance of monitoring and evaluation functions in the implementation of national projects/programs contributing to the achievement of the SDGs.
First, it should be remembered that the monitoring and evaluation functions all come during the active phase of the projects/programs, thus after the planning phase and thus the establishment of the logical framework for development. However, while complementary, the two functions are of distinct importance.
Indeed:
It is noted through these two definitions that the monitoring function is internal to the project/program/policy implementation organization, but the evaluation function can be internal and external (for the sake of objectivity and expertise for independent opinion).
Monitoring is an ongoing process and tends to focus on ongoing activities. Evaluations are conducted at specific times to examine how the activities have been conducted and what their effects have been. Data monitoring is generally used by managers for project/program implementation, product tracking, budget management, procedural compliance, etc. Evaluations may guide implementation (e.g., mid-term evaluation), but they are less frequent and instead examine significant changes (achievements) that require greater methodological rigour in the analysis, such as the impact and relevance of an intervention.
Ultimately, the distinction between monitoring and evaluation is that monitoring is the continuous analysis of project progress towards achieving expected results in order to improve decision-making and management; while evaluation assesses the efficiency, effectiveness, impact, relevance and sustainability of policies and implementation activities.
Returning to the emphasis placed on monitoring and evaluation by development partners, it is clear evaluation must be more important to them as they have a global understanding of the real changes induced by their intervention. Monitoring is undeniably linked to the management capacity of the project's beneficiary states. It is their responsibility to monitor the project well in order to improve management methods as needed to achieve the desired results. And I believe that for this function, even if sometimes the resources (human, material or financial) are insufficient, the development partners plan in advance a prize pool for this. Further, evaluation will corroborate the major deficiencies identified throughout the follow-up and having not found a significant solution before the end of the intervention to establish lessons (capitalization of achievements) to be applied in the implementation of other initiatives.
In terms of suggestion/recommendation, it can be suggested that: